The blue-eyed boy promised to point out his companion of that night. We
took the 10:55 and reached Pedro Miguel during the noon hour. Down in a
box-car camp between the railroad and the canal the boy called for
"Jose" and there presented himself immediately a tall, studious,
solemn-faced Spaniard of spare frame, about forty, dressed in overalls
and working shirt. Here was even less a criminal type than the boy.

"Senor," I asked, "did you go to the dance in Miraflores last Saturday
night with this youth?"

"Si, senor."

"Then I place you under arrest. We will take the one o'clock train."

He opened his mouth to protest, but closed it again without having
uttered a sound. He opened it a second time, then sat suddenly down on
the low edge of the box-car porch. A more genuinely astonished man I
have never seen. No actor could have approached it. Still, whatever my
own conviction, it was my business to bring him before his accuser.
After a time he recovered sufficiently to ask permission to change his
clothes, and disappeared in one of the resident box-cars. The boy was
already being fed in another. Had my prisoners been of almost any one
of the other seventy-one nationalities I should not have thought of
letting them out of my sight. But the Zone Spaniard's respect for law
is proverbial.

"Jose! Pinched Jose!" cried his American boss, when I explained that he
would find himself a man short that afternoon. "You people are sure
barking up the wrong tree this time. Why, Jose has been my engineer for
over two years, and the steadiest man on the Zone. He writes for some
Spanish paper and tells 'em the truth over there so straight that the
rest of 'em down here, the anarchists and all that bunch, are aching to
get him into trouble. But they'll never get anything on Jose. Have him
tell you about it in Spanish if you sabe the lingo."

But Jose was a gallego, whence instead of the voluble flood of
protesting words one expects from a Spaniard on such an occasion, he
wrapped himself in a stoical silence. Not until we were on our way to
the railroad station did I get him to talk. Then he explained in quiet,
unflowery, gestureless language.

He had come to the Canal Zone chiefly to gather literary material. Not
being a man of wealth, however, nor one satisfied with superficial
observation, he had sought employment at his trade as stationary
engineer. Besides laying in a stock for more important writing he hoped
to do in the f